Stephen O. Andersen Earns Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award for Environmental Policy

Washington, DC - The California Air Resources Board (CARB) today announced that IGSD’s Dr. Stephen O. Andersen has been selected for the 2019 Haagen-Smit Clean Air Awards for leadership in environmental policy. Dr. Andersen earned this honor for lifetime achievement while working for the IGSD, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Law Institute, the Consumer Energy Council, the University of Hawaii and College of the Atlantic. He is best known as one of the leading figures in crafting and managing the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer but also found success in wilderness river protection, marine mammal conservation and energy efficiency. He earned his PhD in natural resources economics from the University of California Berkeley.

The Haagen-Smit Award is considered the “Nobel Prize” in air quality achievement and annually recognizes individuals who have made significant lifetime contributions toward improving air quality and climate change science, technology and policy, and the protection of public health.

“For those of us lucky enough to know Steve, we discover that he stays with us as a colleague and friend for the rest of our life,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of IGSD. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Steve for more than 40 years, first at the Environmental Law Institute where we both worked on energy efficiency during the first oil embargo, then when he served as an expert witness in lawsuits I was prosecuting in Alaska to protect the state’s natural and cultural resources and then again when Steve was at EPA. He joined IGSD a decade ago after his distinguished career at the agency, and we’re were able to successfully organize the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, perhaps the single piece of mandatory climate mitigation ever undertaken.”

“I have known and worked with Dr. Andersen over many decades.” said Dr. Mario Molina, 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry Laureate “including co-authoring a paper where we laid out a set of strategies for fast action on climate mitigation, leading with efforts to strengthen the Montreal Protocol with the 1996 Kigali Amendment.”

“It is astonishing what Dr. Andersen has accomplished,” said Dr. David Fahey, Director of the Chemical Sciences Division NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. “In authoring papers and assessments with Dr. Andersen on Montreal Protocol matters, I learned how amazingly effective he is in identifying, assembling, motivating and guiding so many initiatives to a successful conclusion while making that work a pleasure for already overworked experts.”

“I am honored to join the ranks of previous winners of the Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award,” said Dr. Stephen O. Andersen. “I particularly admire CARB for its fierce determination, undaunted courage, analytical prowess and global influence in caring for Earth.”

CARB's release on all the 2019 Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award is available here.